We have received a lot of inquiries from start-up companies, some of them have a budget limit at the product development stage. Many of our existed customers started to cooperate with us when they were a startup company, ACO Mold is happy to be supportive to help customers develop new product. We can try to lower down the injection mold cost as much as possible via 4 ways:
1. Lower down the steel grade
We customize the injection mold for customers exclusively, the mold steel will be defined by customer or we propose the mold steel according to the total production volume. Typically a harden injection mold can guarantee 1000K shots at least, a pre-harden injection mold can guarantee 300K shots at least. When the customer required a harden injection mold but total production quantity is 400K, we would propose to go for a pre-harden injection mold in steel 738H (HRC 35-40) which is modified based on P20 steel, and it can run longer time under regular maintenance and proper operation. The injection mold cost can be reduced while compare to the harden injection mold because of different steel cost and machining cost.
2. Simply the mold structure
The structure (complexity) of the part is highly related to the injection mold cost, a slider/lifter mechanism required for a mold, the injection mold price will be higher than the one without slider/lifter mechanism. See examples below:
We will have to do 2 sliders mechanism for the hole feature on side, if the hole feature can be removed, the injection mold will be smaller without slider mechanism, the injection mold cost can be reduced.
There is an undercut inside, we need to make an inner side slider to release it, we can straighten the edge of the hole to lower down the injection mold cost.
3. Lower down the tolerance
High tolerance requirement means more machining difficulty and higher machining cost. See example below:
The customer responded the injection mold price quoted is high, we did quote higher mold cost than usual because we noticed it requires high tolerance, we did similar project like this before but less tolerance requirement, finally we proposed to make the tolerances +/-0.1 mm instead of +/-0.05 mm to reduce the injection mold cost.
4. Lower down the expectation of profit.
ACO Mold have many new RFQs coming in every single day, we always prefer to quote directly the bottom price at the beginning to meet the efficiency of the injection mold quotation. For those customers who have problem to handle the budget but have good faith of cooperation, ACO Mold are willing to offer discount to establish business relationship.
